Ideology Of National Security

This Daily Show item pointing out a few lines from the Inaugural that seem similar to Bush’s rhetoric is making the rounds (via John Schwenkler). In fact, there aren’t that many similar phrases in this particular speech, and those that Stewart was able to identify seem like so much standard boilerplate. However, the statements seem to be nothing more than this, because they reflect the bipartisan ideological and policy consensus. Obviously, I think there are much better examples that show clear affinities between the ambitious hegemonist views of the two, but the examples taken from the Inaugural are useful to illustrate a more important point. That point is not merely that “Obama is more like Bush than you want to believe,” or that his election represents no fundamental change in the way the government will make policy. While true, these are no longer in any way remarkable, and they have all been covered many times before. If the transition didn’t made these things clear already, I’m not sure what will.

What is interesting is what these statements show about the minimal differences between the parties and the political class’ embrace of shared assumptions about U.S. power and their acceptance of myths relating to American history. When Obama says that “we” will not apologize for our way of life and Bush said that “the American way of life is non-negotiable,” they are expressing in a simple form the key convictions of what Prof. Bacevich has identified as the ideology of national security. Let’s review those convictions.

Prof. Bacevich writes in The Limits of Power:

Four core convictions inform this ideology of national security. In his second inaugural address, President Bush testified eloquently to each of them.

Here are the four convictions at their most basic:

According to the first of these convictions, history has an identifiable and indisputable purpose….History’s abiding theme is freedom, to which all humanity aspires…..

According to the second conviction, the United States has always embodied, and continues to embody, freedom….

According to the third conviction, Providence summons America to ensure freedom’s ultimate triumph….Unique among the great powers, this nation pursues interests larger than itself. When it acts, it does so on freedom’s behalf and at the behest of higher authority….Only cynics or those disposed toward evil could possibly dissent from this self-evident truth. [bold mine-DL]

According to the final conviction, for the American way of life to endure, freedom must prevail everywhere.

What does this have to do with Obama? Well, of course, Obama accepts the ideology of national security completely, and it has been clear that this is the case for years. Even if you could not locate all four convictions in his Inaugural Address (and I think you might be able to do this), you can certainly find them in his public speeches and written statements over the years. It is doubtful that he could have been elected President had he not accepted this ideology, and it is important to understand that this is an ideology shared by essentially the entire political class. In that respect, it is “mainstream,” regardless of how crazy it seems to some of us. The similarities with Bush are no accident–Bush’s tenure represented an expansion, an exaggerated expression, of past habits, but as has become more and more depressingly evident his administration has not represented a radical break from past practice so much as a redoubling of the same practices.

To say that Obama has accepted this ideology is not a statement about Obama’s flexibility or lack of it, except to say that he is constrained by the assumptions that govern how the political class understands the world and America’s place in it. The belated recognition by neoconservatives that Obama accepts this ideology was inevitable. They feign surprise mainly because it is useful to maintain the fiction that there are meaningful, large differences between the parties on major policies and they have an incentive to perpetuate the idea that they are better adherents of this ideology than those farther to the left. Likewise, there is a strong incentive on the left to emphasize small differences with neoconservatives over means and tactics.

Here is Bacevich on Obama from The Limits of Power:

Like Clinton, Obama was intent on identifying himself [in his Foreign Affairs essay] with the cause that “we stood for and fought for.” Like Clinton, in recounting the heroic narrative in which Roosevelt, Truman, and their successors had figured so prominently he was testifying to that narrative’s essential truth and continuing validity.

Yet almost inescapably he also subscribed to George W. Bush’s own interpretation of that narrative. As Obama went on to explain, “The security and well-being of each and every American depend on the security and well-being of those who live beyond our borders.” Like Bush–like those who had preceded Bush–Obama defined America’s purposes in cosmic terms. “The mission of the United States,” he proclaimed ,”is to provide global leadership grounded in the understanding that the world shares a common security and a common humanity.”

As Bacevich made clear in American Empire, leadership is the not very subtle euphemism that our politicians use to describe U.S. hegemony or the American empire. There is, of course, no meaningful difference between the words hegemony and leadership–the latter sounds more appealing–and there are obvious similarities between a word derived from the word for command and one that refers to direction and leading. There is another passage from Bacevich’s American Empire that could very easily be mistaken for a summary of Obama’s foreign policy statements. This is most revealing, as American Empire came out in 2002 long before most people had ever heard of Obama and before Obama had said much of anything about foreign policy. To the extent that Obama’s statements echo the passage below, it shows how much of the conventional wisdom regarding U.S. foreign policy he has imbibed and accepted. In describing Clinton’s articulation of U.S. strategy, Bacevich identified five ideas that could just as easily be found and have been found in the statements of Obama and Bush:

the identification of interdependence as the dominant reality of international politics; a commitment to advancing the cause of global openness; an emphasis on free trade and investment as central to that strategy and a prerequisite for prosperity at home; a belief in the necessity of American hegemony–while avoiding any actual use of that term; and frequent reference to the bugbear of “isolationism” as a means of disciplining public opinion and maintaining deference to the executive branch in all matters pertaining to foreign relations.

So while there may be hope in some quarters that Obama doesn’t mean what he said in the Inaugural, there is little reason to believe that. It is not only likely that he genuinely means it, but it is politically necessary that the public perceives that he means it.

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31 Responses to Ideology Of National Security

Perhaps it’s the cynic in me, but one really has to wonder what continues to motivate noble (at least from appearances) outliers to seek entry into the Imperial Class. It would seem to me to be more of a mental illness than ambition to work so hard to get inside the system, sacrifice whatever noble motivations you had, and then simply adopting the standard caretaker role. What does it feel like to come home from that every day; “Honey, I kept Castro in his place again today!”

Well, pragmatism has chains? Maybe they can affect change on the margins they care about? One wonders exactly what an Obama administration do differently, if they weren’t saddled with an economic disaster area and a couple of war anchors dragging them downhill? I don’t see any policy shifts over the last year, so one can assume their readings of York Harding require any major retooling.

They’re just clinicians treating the Corpus Americana. I wish Bacevich was wrong.

To a large extent I think interdependence has led to greater prosperity at home, in a material sense. And the argument would be that American hegemony fostered that interdependence – that it couldn’t have happened without us. Probably true.

My biggest problem, though, isn’t the question of whether this has worked or not – it’s the lengths to which we will go to protect this “arrangement.” If hegemony has been profitable/made us more prosperous/”kept us safe” – then it pretty much has to be sustained at all costs, right?

Like previous assertions that Obama would only pay lip service to actually changing our national security policy of torture and rendition, the notion that Obama is a conventional hegemonist will likely also be refuted over time. I see no mention from Daniel of the historic executive orders Obama has given in his first days in office, something he might celebrate except that it counters his own negative predictions.

Obama certainly believes in some version of our national security religion, but the devil is always in the details. Lumping all who think it is important to promote a tolerant and free world culture in the same boat ends up producing some embarrassing errors, and makes it impossible to anticipate any deviations from previous policy – as we see with these executive orders that Daniel assumed would never happen, by the same logic that he uses in this piece.

I have seen the reports on his executive orders, and those are good signs that at least Obama hasn’t done any backsliding on Guantanamo and torture…yet! We are going into day four of the Obama era. Four days into the Bush administration, hardly anyone could have foreseen what they would end up doing.

So he boldly moved to do something that both he and his opponent pledged to do. When I was discussing the possibility that the new administration might not make significant changes to interrogation practices, as were many progressive bloggers back when Brennan was still a serious contender for a major intelligence position, it wasn’t necessarily obvious that Obama would keep even this basic pledge. Skepticism and questioning were appropriate then, and there is some reason to believe that progressive complaints about Brennan forced the new administration to look for people to head intelligence agencies who were not significantly implicated in the torture regime.

There were some worrisome signs that Obama might succumb to the status quo even in those policies where he had stated his intentions to break with Bush administration practices, and in the end thanks partly to pressure from the left he followed through on what he said he would do. In this post I assume that he will do exactly what he has said he will do, and I take his words as the proof of his adherence to this ideology, so I don’t see how anything in this post is refuted by what has happened since Tuesday.

Did I declare at any time that Obama would definitely not forbid the use of torture? No, I didn’t, and you can’t find any statement to that effect in my archives. I wrote two or maybe three posts raising concerns about Brennan and pressure on Obama from past administration holdovers. However, during the transition the signs had not been terribly good until very recently. Am I supposed to fall over myself to congratulate him for keeping core promises?

The devil is in the details of the regulations that interrogators have to follow in the new administration in the future. The orders are a good start, and they’re entirely consistent with his frequent public statements, which so far does nothing to contradict my initial assessment of Obama’s policy views made well over a year and a half ago: hegemony, minus torture.

Indeed, if Obama’s campaign pledges on torture and Guantanamo are reliable guides to what he would do in office, we can likewise treat his many hegemonist and interventionist statements as good indicators of what we can expect from him in other areas. The “notion” that Obama is a conventional hegemonist comes from Obama’s own statements, and nothing in his Inaugural or his early actions this week would suggest that he has been misleading us about his position. In other words, there is every reason to think that the claims in this post will hold up quite well.

If you haven’t read Bacevich’s books, I recommend them to you. His point is that this ideology provides a rationale for the consolidation and expansion of government power to pursue hegemony, and that this ensures almost complete continuity in policy from administration to administration. The “tolerant and free world culture” part, to use your phrase, is at best a means to an end and at worst a pretext for domination. Focusing on a handful of changes while ignoring the structural reasons why most policy is locked in the way it is perpetuates the fiction that these changes are what really matter.

“Obama will be taking office in what is generally considered to be wartime, despite the nebulous, open-ended nature of the so-called â€œLong Warâ€ alongside the campaign in Iraq, so the temptation to justify any number of usurpations in the name of national security will be great. Obama already supported reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act and the FISA bill while in the Senateâ€“how likely is he really to change significantly from these positions when he is in control of the executive branch? We are still experiencing the effects of the financial crisis that has resulted in vastly increased the powers of the executive, and Obama has already supported this increase in powers.

If executive power grows fastest and with the fewest checks during times of crisis, and it is in the nature of the executive to seek ever more power, executive power is bound to grow under the next administration. The only thing that would prevent expansion of executive power would be stiff resistance from Congress and the courts. The latter will be of little use until after some particularly egregious abuse has occurred and has to be rectified, and Congress will be no more able or willing to resist a President of the majorityâ€™s own party than it was able or willing to resist Mr. Bush when he invoked national security during debates on the â€œsurgeâ€ and FISA. This will be true even if Obama follows through on his promises to change interrogation procedures and treatment of detainees.”

As the ideology of national security is, as Bacevich puts it, an “elastic rationale for action,” and is mainly expressed through the consolidation of executive power, there is nothing that contradicts the claim that Obama adheres to it. I can understand why an Obama supporter would find Obama’s own statements on this subject to be embarrassing in their embrace of hegemonism, but that is a problem with Obama’s statements and not with my use of them here.

One more point: this post concludes by saying that Obama *means what he says*, so citing examples in which Obama fulfills campaign pledges actually *confirms* this interpretation of the Inaugural and Obama’s policy views.

> There is, of course, no meaningful difference between the words hegemony and leadership

The difference between hegemony and leadership is the same difference as between torture and interrogation, or between gaining power through a military coup and gaining it through an election. One implies the use of force, the other does not. Obama’s appointment today of two high-profile envoys to the Middle East illustrates both his understanding of foreign policy leadership and the difference between his approach and that of his predecessor.

One can certainly argue that this kind of diplomacy is not a good idea, or is a sham, or is an insignificant part of our foreign policy compared to our military interventions. But to argue that there is no meaningful difference between the idea of influence and the idea of force seems to blur a rather large distinction.

The words mean literally the same thing. Torture and interrogation refer to two very different practices; one of the perversions of this administration is to treat torture as a kind of interrogation, when it is merely brutality. Leadership does not exclude force, and hegemony does not exclude persuasion and influence, because they are not meaningfully different concepts. We associate hegemony with coercion and leadership with something more benign because hegemony is often used pejoratively to describe political domination. In fact, hegemony is merely a descriptive term of the disparity of power between a great power and other states. It refers to possessing greater power, and this power can be exercised in a number of ways. When politicians refer to “American leadership,” they are referring to U.S. hegemony. What else do people think they’re talking about? It is more polite to refer to leadership, but the meaning is the same.

Being a hegemon does not always have to mean invasions, air strikes and assassinations–those are but a few of a instruments of a hegemon. There are economic, diplomatic and cultural tools at the disposal of such a state as well. Disagreements between proponents of “hard” and “soft” or even “smart” power do not involve critiquing hegemony as such, but only in how hegemonic power is wielded. Many people believe that U.S. hegemony is benevolent and good, and it seems plain to me that Obama is one of them.

Incidentally, Conrad’s complaint seems particularly odd in light of the post I wrote earlier this week in which I praised Obama for his recognition that the choice between security and liberty was a false one. His orders this week show that he meant what he said in the Inaugural, which is *exactly* the point I am making in this post.

Daniel, I think you brilliantly articulated this thread. Let me add one more point. I agree, being a hegemon does not always have to mean invasions, etc. It does mean that America gets to call the shots.

The crisis in the Balkans was a European crisis. They had the aggregate military capability to deal with it. The Russian threat to Georgia is primarily a European problem. If a continental problem is severe enough to the Europeans, let them handle it. If they do not feel inclined to take action on an issue within their scope, why should the United States?

Of course, the United States as a member of NATO could provide logistical and advisory support to European military operations conducted on the continent. But those operations should be planned, executed (and paid for) by the Europeans. And should they tell us they do not have the capability, barring a massive crisis, we should tell them to buy it. No more NATO free lunch.

Regarding the issue of Obama “meaning what he says”, your rhetoric creates a false standard, even intentionally. You suggest that when American politicians talk about such things as “a tolerant and free world culture” they don’t really mean it, they just use that as a PR dodge to cover their real intentions, which is the forceful promotion of American hegemony. So when Obama talks about that kind of thing, you aren’t actually saying he means what he says, but that he means what everyone else means when they say that, which is actually the opposite of what they say.

So if you take that into account, and attribute to Obama the virtue that he actually does mean what he says, and combine that with his vow to actually change our foreign policy direction, he really does seem to be saying that he’s genuinely interesting in promoting a “a tolerant and free world culture”, rather than just using that as a cover for crude hegemonics. Now you have every right to be skeptical, both as to whether he really does intend this, and whether he can really bring any change about, but if you go by the standard that he means what he says, he clearly is going to do things differently. It may not be differently enough in its entirety to entirely please people like yourself, but it also looks to be significantly different from what we’ve seen in the past, especially the last eight years.

And that’s the point about torture and detention/rendition/secret prisons. He meant what he said, and he acted swiftly on that. As for executive power grabbing in times of crisis, he’s already signed orders actually diminishing his own powers already, which is a good sign we should give him credit for. I have no problem with holding his had to the fire on the promises he has made, but that’s a different thing from cynically assuming he won’t actually make the changes he’s promised, which has been your general take on Obama for the last year and more.

It is of course best to see how his policies unfold. I don’t expect to support all of them, but there’s every reason to be optimistic (your least favorite word in the dictionary, I’m sure), within reason of course. So it’s also a question of offering him encouragement, not just left-handed compliments that begrudge his efforts to change things around, as if its easy to do so.

But thanks for responding with some depth to this issue. I hope you continue to address it in future posts.

It seems a bit odd to me to argue that words mean something different than how we normally use them, but for the sake of argument I’m happy to concede the point.

The larger point that I’m making is that, whatever words you use to describe these things, there’s a moral difference between “invasions, assassinations, and air strikes,” and diplomacy, cultural persuasion, and even sanctions. Even if the intended ends are the same, the difference in means makes a moral difference (at least to some of us).

I understand that your critique is at a higher level – you’re disagreeing with the ends rather than the means. All I’m saying is that you shouldn’t let that disagreement blind you to the very real differences between waging war and conducting diplomacy.

That would be contrary to hegemony. The free lunch in the east and the west is a feature, not a defect. It is a means.

> his vow to actually change our foreign policy direction

Even by the most liberal interpretation, Obama at best intends to return to the means of the hegemonic status quo. There are no radical or even major deviations in his announced policies. Thus, the ends are sanctified and moral, and people can quible about the means.

And here, the means is to continue bombing an allied state to kill “terrorists”:

Thanks, Howard and Terry, for the kind remarks. I had seen Rod link to the post on his own blog, but hadn’t seen the editorial until you mentioned it. I’m glad to see that the argument and Bacevich’s ideas are getting additional coverage at DMN.

“Whereâ€™s the outrage among his supporters?”

I have given up asking that question. Then again, I’m not sure most of his supporters were ever offended by the idea of launching strikes into Pakistan against Pakistan’s wishes. Once he came out in favor of it last August, most of the pro-Obama bloggers I was reading were touting this as proof that Obama was “strong” and hawkish and so on. Violating another state’s sovereignty doesn’t seem to trouble that many on the left as a matter of principle, so long as some rationalization can be found. The same is also true of most people on the right, obviously. Concern about state sovereignty (and international law in general) seems to be inversely proportional to a party’s possession of political power in Washington. I am probably going to be writing an item on Holbrooke’s appointment in connection with these strikes, so keep an eye out.

In relation to the matter of Obama continuing Bush’s overreach of executive power, I’d refer you to this article in Politico describing Obama’s hiring of the three top legal critics of Bush’s administration to staff his Office Of Legal Council, and his voe to abide by the rule of law. These are the people who say the rule of law limits the President’s powers for more than previous Presidents have stretched it.

â€œThey have alarmingly narrow views of executive power,â€ said a former Bush aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Regarding the Pakistani strikes, to be fair to Obama he neither ordered nor approved of them. They are part of an ongoing military operation approved of by Bush that doesn’t stop simply because there is a new President. I’m sure Obama will review it and decide if it suits his policies in the region. He’s certainly said he’s not categorically opposed to such things, but we don’t know if he wants them to be normal military strategy either.

That’s a rather sorry excuse–Obama surely has not been ignorant of what the U.S. military has been doing in Pakistan, and the Secretary of Defense and the rest of the chain of command is only a phone call away.

Well, he probably got on the phone after it happened. But the idea that he would be briefed ahead of time on every little action in the war there is unlikely. Maybe someone will ask him about it and we will get some clarification. But really, give him a break, especially in trying to get a grasp from the inside on how to conduct the war up there. It’s going to take a few months for a clear strategy to emerge, including the policy on this kind of action.

> Itâ€™s going to take a few months for a clear strategy to emerge, including the policy on this kind of action.

If you think Obama is that stupid, then he’s just setting himself up for a Somalia Moment. I’d give him more credit than letting the military bomb a sovereign country without approval.

> Whereâ€™s the outrage among his supporters?

You missed the point here. Whatever sliver of difference you think there is between mainstream Democrats and Republicans on FP is mostly manufactured in the media or your imagination. Progressives did complain about Obama’s stance on the bombings last summer.

srv:You missed the point here. Whatever sliver of difference you think there is between mainstream Democrats and Republicans on FP is mostly manufactured in the media or your imagination. Progressives did complain about Obamaâ€™s stance on the bombings last summer.

Oh, I don’t think there is much difference between cheerleaders for both major parties. The question was more rhetorical than actual, since very few Democratic cheerleaders read this blog. An easy shot at supporters of President Obama, if you will.

Well, he probably got on the phone after it happened. But the idea that he would be briefed ahead of time on every little action in the war there is unlikely. Maybe someone will ask him about it and we will get some clarification. But really, give him a break, especially in trying to get a grasp from the inside on how to conduct the war up there. Itâ€™s going to take a few months for a clear strategy to emerge, including the policy on this kind of action.

conradg

Briefed ahead of time? Perhaps not. But being aware of standing orders and such? How could he not be? So, this is not simply a question of “learning how to conduct the war” as if it’s merely about being ‘pragmatic’ and finding out what works. It’s a question pertaining to the sovereignty of another country and what is just, especially when such actions can be taken as acts of war by the aggrieved party.

I agree with Tedschan, not srv. Obama was certainly aware of the standing orders, but would not have been briefed on any particular operation. Clearly, he didn’t want to immediately issue orders to the military right off the bat forbidding them from continuing this operation. Is it really hard to see why not? It would sure look pretty ham-handed of him to immediately interfere with the details of the military’s operations. To be done right, it’s got to be part of an complete overhaul of the military’s approach in Afghanistan. Now, maybe he will still approve of these kinds of missions, but even if he won’t, he’s not going to step in right away and countermand in-progress operations like this. So it’s not terribly indicative of how he will deal with this sort of thing. One has to recognize the delicacy of a new President countermanding military operations. It’s by no means the same sort of thing as ordering the end of all torture. And it would have a huge political blowback if done this way. It has to be handled much more delicately and diplomatically with full consideration of the overall strategy in Afghanistan through the whole of the military leadership.

I am unaware of the point in time where Obama was campaigning against missile strikes in Pakistan. If I remember correctly in the debates, he was consistently hawkish on Pakistan (he outhawked McCain) and was advocating more missile strikes in the Northwest Frontier. Obama is not serious about causalities in Pakistan and that is obvious to anyone who has followed his statements. I don’t think he is going to change any military policy dramatically especially the drone attacks, which to be fair to him, he has never given any indicator of changing.

Obama is rather hawkish on Pakistan, and not opposed to going after Bin Laden or high Al Qaeda figures operating in Pakistan. But it’s not clear that he wants to make it a commonplace battlefield strategy. I have mixed feelings about it, feeling it’s justified to some degree in some cases, but not a wise thing to do regularly and commonly. But it’s very much a tactical issue, not a strategic one.

The issue of Karzai is part of a larger, strategic issue of how to approach the whole business of fighting in Afghanistan, and the signals being given that we might support a unifed opposition party that wins the next elections suggests something about our overall diplomatic strategy. Military strategy comes next, as a subset of diplomacy, and tactic come after that, as a subset of military strategy. So a sound way to change things must begin at the level of basic diplomatic strategy, not ground level military tactics. The fact that Obama seems to understand this is good, and we will just have to see how this ends up translating on the ground as a tactical change. In other words, it’s less than a week, give the man a chance to develop a new strategy from the top down.